Why Aren’t We Talking About Things That Matter Anymore?
Cry, the Beloved Country was a book deploring the apartheid era in South Africa. The phrase came to mind this morning when I opened Fox News to find out whether we were at war with Iran yet — only to discover that the lead story was that a local sheriff in Arizona had been spotted at a basketball game! No lie. Check it out here. Truth really is stranger than fiction.
In fairness to the editors of Fox New digital, the Arizona sheriff in question is supposedly in charge of the investigation into the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, an 84-year old woman who was apparently kidnapped from her home and whose story has dominated the national “news” for the last week. I guess we are supposed to be shocked and alarmed that the sheriff in question is not spending 24/7 working on the investigation and took a little personal time off to go to a basketball game.
The lead story in newspapers used to be the most important news of the day, in the editor’s opinion. At least that’s what I was taught in my high school journalism class, and it seemed to be so for most of my life, but no longer.
The so-called “news” media can’t be troubled by paying much attention to boring but important stories.
Today, the lead story is “clickbait,” “something [sensational] designed to make readers want to click on a hyperlink especially when the link leads to content of dubious value or interest.” In today’s highly competitive digital marketplace for online content, the so-called “news” media can’t be troubled by paying much attention to boring but important stories. (RELATED: The New York Times, Kristof, and the Ethics of War Reporting)
But as often happens with what I like to call “epiphanies,” moments when a deeper truth becomes manifest through a particular incident, the breathless wall to wall coverage of the Nancy Guthrie abduction — despite the fact that there have been no real developments to report to date — exemplifies a troubling trend by which trivial but sensational “human interest” stories, especially about the personal foibles of public figures, crowd out more important events in the collective public mind. Who knew Jeffrey Epstein? How tall will the arch be that Trump wants to build in Washington? What will Bad Bunny say during the halftime show at the Super Bowl? Will Taylor Swift finally marry her football player friend, Travis Kelce?
Let’s call that disturbing trend “the triumph of personality over substance.” Donald J. Trump is a transformative president, right up there with Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and FDR, according to Newt Gingrich, who is one smart cookie in my experience. (I once had the privilege of moderating a public debate between Gingrich and Akhil Amar, my Yale Law colleague who is the most thoughtful constitutional lawyer of his generation. I thought Gingrich won.) Meanwhile, the media seems appalled and obsessed with Trump’s design for a new ballroom in the White House, which they consider tasteless. (RELATED: The White House East Wing Renovations: Exorcizing the Daemons of Modernism)
Another wise man, Victor Davis Hanson, notes the current parallels to the run-up to the American Civil War as the state of Minnesota claims the “sovereign” right to declare itself independent of federal immigration laws and demand the removal of federal law enforcement agents. That hubbub is almost certainly designed to distract attention from the developing scandal in which many billions of dollars appropriated by the federal government to help needy children and for other sympathetic causes have been siphoned off by fraudsters, allegedly with the knowledge of local politicians who turned a blind eye to the fraud. Those events bring to mind a great line by Eric Hoffer, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” But the important point for the moment is that almost no one is talking about the things that matter (to borrow the title of Charles Krauthammer’s book); it is all about personality and style issues, and substance is pushed aside.
About one person a day is kidnapped in the United States, many of them children. Of course, this is awful and a terrible tragedy for the families involved, but why does the Nancy Guthrie incident dominate the national news and crowd out discussion of more important topics? Elsewhere, I have argued that the obligation to cover both sides of important public issues fairly ought to be a matter of journalistic ethics, rather than government regulation.
However, the problem I am describing isn’t just a criticism of the editorial judgments of the national media; they are responding to what they see as the preferences of the public in the highly competitive market on the internet. The public, aka voters, apparently would rather read racy speculation about what Prince Andrew did or didn’t do with underage girls on Epstein’s island than read dry and uninteresting but important discussions of policy issues like tariffs or the expiration of the treaties limiting nuclear arsenals.
Greek tragedy teaches that every hero has an “Achilles heel,” a fatal flaw, that is his or her weakness. Donald J. Trump’s is his deaf ear for issues of personal style. Examples abound: an alleged affair with a porn star; late-night posts on social media that portray former President Obama and his wife as apes; renaming the Kennedy Center after himself. Didn’t this guy have a mother or a kindergarten teacher? (RELATED: Guess What the New Yorker Thinks of the Kennedy Center’s New Name?)
If the Republicans lose their narrow working majority in Congress in the upcoming mid-term elections, which now seems likely, President Trump will be unable to get much accomplished in the second half of his current term and instead will have to spend most of his time fending off impeachment and numerous investigations. And worse yet, if his successor — who now appears likely to be my former student JD Vance — loses the 2028 presidential election, many of the Trump administration’s accomplishments will be undone by its successors.
Those deeply unfortunate outcomes for the country will occur, if they do, as a result of the toxic combination of Trump’s lack of taste and the so-called “news” media’s obsession with clickbait rather than issues of substance. Trump may not be the kind of guy you’d like your sister to marry, as I once put it in these pages, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be an excellent president, a point that goes back to Machiavelli’s The Prince. Many of the most successful national leaders have had unseemly personal lives.
Nevertheless, Trump’s personal peccadillos are turning off many voters, particularly women, despite his success on larger, more important issues, such as closing the border; cutting off drug traffic into the U.S.; mediating an end to eight wars; reviving our economy while cutting the rate of inflation by two-thirds; reducing prescription drug prices and oh yes, setting back Iraq’s development of nuclear weapons by years etc.
But no one seems to be talking about the things that matter anymore. The public conversation is mostly about the Nancy Guthries of the world.
Ah, yes, cry, the beloved country.
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